Hi there, this is my first battle with bed bugs and I was wondering if this was enough to prevent bringing them home with me. I am staying with my dad for two weeks, and didn't know there were bed bugs until it was too late to do anything about my luggage. I'm going to share my plan of prevention, and maybe you can shed some advice on if I'm doing enough or not? Here it goes:

I leave on Sunday night, so Sunday morning I am going to the laundromat and washing all my clothes on high heat.

While they are washing, I am going to vacuum out the car and spray the car down

Then, I am going to go to Walmart and buy plastic clothing containers and a new suitcase.

Put the clean clothes in the plastic containers from Walmart and place those in the new suitcase, cover the suitcase with a garbage bag.

Then I'm going to wash additional purses.

Take a shower at the house, but not bring any of my stuff inside. Put on clean outfit.

HEAD TO AIRPORT

Upon returning home, I am going to put everything I brought: clothes, pillow, laptop, phone, makeup, etc. in a plastic bag/container with nuvan pro strips and leave them outside for two weeks.

take clothes off outside, and leave them in the container described above.

Drying clothing on hot is an important step. I suggest adding new that. However, you could bring clothing home and wash/dry on hot rather than repeatedly washing on hot and treating clothing with DDVP.

If you want more input on your DDVP plan, search the forum for posts by P Bellp, who is an expert on its use.

We also have Travel FAQs which cover what do to when you're exposed. Find them via the Bed Bug FAQs link above.